Kurdish militias are closing in on an Islamic State-held town along Syria’s frontier with Turkey, a day into an offensive to push back the militant group, Kurdish officials and Syrian activists said Sunday.

Regaining control of Tal Abyad could cut off a route for Islamic State fighters and supplies.

Thousands of Syrians have fled in anticipation of fighting along the northern border as Kurdish fighters advanced on Tal Abyad.

Through social media, a spokesman for the Kurdish YPG militia encouraged would-be refugees to move toward interior cities like Hasakah to wait out any violence, rather than leave the country.

Turkish concern about refugees

Some Syrians crossed into Turkey Sunday after being blocked by Turkish soldiers; one reporter at the scene witnessed the military allowing refugees to cross, while another said people cut through the fence on the Syrian side to enter.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Sunday voiced concern over the refugees, claiming that their departure was leaving a vacuum for two Kurdish groups, the Democratic Union Party (PYD) and the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), to gain ground along Turkey’s border.

“This is not a good sign,” he told reporters.

Erdogan has repeatedly disagreed with U.S.-led coalition airstrikes in northern Syria, saying they are targeting “Arab and Turkmen” residents in the area, and carving space for Kurds. Turkey has a fraught internal history with its own Kurdish minority community, and Syria’s internal conflict paired with the Islamic State onslaught in the last year has led at least 1.5 million Syrian refugees to seek safety across the border.

Coalition airstrikes

Following a week of heavy airstrikes in which the international coalition targeted more than 20 IS sites daily, the coalition scaled back on Saturday and Sunday. Overnight, the Pentagon reported 12 strikes across Iraq and one in Kobani, Syria.

Brett McGurk, the U.S. Deputy Special Presidential Envoy for the Global Coalition to Counter ISIL, said Sunday that Kurdish fighters and other units in Syria are making gains against Islamic State.

He also told NBC’s Meet the Press that every time the United States has advised and assisted Iraqi forces, tribal forces, or Kurdish fighters, they have had success in the battle against Islamic State.

He added that now that the United States is working with the tribal committee in Anbar province, “we are going to see over the next week some new tribal fighters get into the fight.”
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